Constraints on dark matter-nucleon effective couplings in the presence of kinematically distinct halo substructures using the DEAP-3600 detector

Abstract

DEAP-3600 is a single-phase liquid argon detector aiming to directly detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), located at SNOLAB (Sudbury, Canada). After analyzing data taken during the first year of operation, a null result was used to place an upper bound on the WIMP-nucleon, spin-independent, isoscalar cross section. This study reinterprets this result within a nonrelativistic effective field theory framework and further examines how various possible substructures in the local dark matter halo may affect these constraints. Such substructures are hinted at by kinematic structures in the local stellar distribution observed by the Gaia satellite and other recent astronomical surveys. These include the Gaia Sausage (or Enceladus), as well as a number of distinct streams identified in recent studies. Limits are presented for the coupling strength of the effective contact interaction operators ${\mathcal{O}}_{1}$, ${\mathcal{O}}_{3}$, ${\mathcal{O}}_{5}$, ${\mathcal{O}}_{8}$, and ${\mathcal{O}}_{11}$, considering isoscalar, isovector, and xenonphobic scenarios, as well as the specific operators corresponding to millicharge, magnetic dipole, electric dipole, and anapole interactions. The effects of halo substructures on each of these operators are explored as well, showing that the ${\mathcal{O}}_{5}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{8}$ operators are particularly sensitive to the velocity distribution, even at dark matter masses above $100\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}/{c}^{2}$.